We have heard today that as a direct result of Leigh Day sending, on the individuals behalf, a pre action letter for judicial review the DWP have finally re-instated support. However, there were a number of issues with the AtW scheme raised by the deaf individual in their letter that the DWP failed to respond satisfactorily to, such as: a lack of transparency; failure to publish an accessible guidance, internal inconsistency of decisions made and failure to consult on changes to funding. Stop Changes therefore propose to challenge these issues in order to assist the many other deaf people experiencing difficulties. Leigh Day are committed to assisting with a case being brought.

Ugo Hayter, a solicitor at Leigh Day in the Human Rights Department said:

“We are deeply concerned that due to recent changes, which we believe were introduced without proper consultation, the Access to Work scheme appears to be in complete disarray.

“As a result deaf and hard of hearing Access to Work users, who depend on the support provided to them by the scheme, are having their support arbitrarily cut or suspended, this is putting their employment at serious risk.

“We are currently in contact with interested parties who are seeking to challenge the scheme via judicial review proceedings in an attempt to improve it for all its deaf and hard of hearing users.”

Stop changes would like to hear from anyone still experiencing problems with AtW who would be interested in taking a case forward. We are in a strong position as we have legal support in place and now, thanks to the generosity of individuals, have a fighting fund established.

Please contact us if you feel your situation would make a good case to take forward to judicial review: emilysmith2007@mail.com